Rate My Professor Benita Brooks

Benita R. Brooks, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Literacy Education and Faculty Chair in the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), with an appointment as incoming Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning effective July 1, 2025. A UNLV alumna, she earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Literacy Education from UNLV in 2009. She also holds an M.A. in English, Rhetoric and Composition from Murray State University (1999) and a B.A. in English from Johnson C. Smith University (1996), where she received the Department of Languages and Literature Most Outstanding Senior Investigative Paper Award. Before returning to UNLV in August 2023, Dr. Brooks served as a tenured Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Sam Houston State University (2020-2023), Assistant Professor there (2014-2020), and Assistant Professor at Augusta University (2011-2013). Her career includes over twelve years as a faculty member and ten years as a high school English teacher in Nevada, California, and Texas.

Dr. Brooks specializes in literacy education, with research centered on well-being literacy—a framework encompassing knowledge, vocabulary, awareness, reflection, and action—as a transformative tool in education. Her investigations explore teacher preparation programs' role in equipping educators with communication skills for well-being promotion, integration of well-being literacy into high school English curricula, and Black adolescent girls' conceptualization of transformative leadership through this lens. She has secured over $8.6 million in grant funding and earned awards including the David Payne Academic Community Engagement Award (Sam Houston State University, 2022), College of Education Inclusion Award (2020), and Thomas Wilson Award for Civic and Community Service (UNLV, 2010). Key publications feature the co-authored book When Textbooks Fall Short: New Ways, New Texts, New Sources of Information in the Content Areas (Heinemann, 2010) and articles such as “Cultivating a University-Community Partnership through an Innovative After-School Academic Program” (The Texas Forum of Teacher Education, 2021) and “Exploring Cultural Responsiveness among White School Principals in Rural Schools with High-Performing African American Readers” (Journal of School Leadership, 2019). Dr. Brooks has demonstrated significant impact through leadership roles as Vice President of the Nevada Association of Teacher Educators, Recruitment and Retention Officer for AERA’s SIG 41 on Experiential Education and Community Engagement, and Founding Editor of READ: An Online Journal for Literacy Educators (2015-2020).